Image by Vedat Demirdöven, Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Germany (CC BY-ND 2.0).
A good friend and I often get together to learn new things, have discussions, and work on projects. We sometimes talk about learning things through decent educational apps designed for kids, but this prompted my friend to ask, “Why don’t they make good educational apps for adults?” He had a good point. My hasty reply included something about kids’ parents being more likely to buy apps for them so that they will learn something while they play and also get extra practice to help them at school. Plus, there are so many iPads used in education that the market is primed for the constant deluge of new apps for kids.
But none of these are good excuses. Adults like to learn, too, and we usually have enough money to spend on educational apps for ourselves. We don’t bat an eye when spending up to $10 on an excellent game app, such as Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, or Forbidden Island, for example. We could just as easily spend a few dollars on something that will teach us a new skill or help us gain new knowledge.
Instead, we often have to make do with some of the kids’ apps that can actually challenge us, such as Stack the Countries, Presidents vs. Aliens, or Fantastic Contraption 2. But while the game components of the apps help keep kids’ interest, adults often find those parts take up more time than we’d like, keeping us from the meat of the topic.
[This post, by Jenny Williams, was originally published on Monday. Click here to read the full article, and leave any comments you may have on the original post.]
